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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there and just because you can doesn’t mean it is. We depend on what we see and hear. But we don’t actually see and we don’t actually hear. So we survive according to the accuracy of our assumptions until a lack of attention, a misperception, excess, want or attrition finally put our garments back into the Earth. Time to call your tailor.

All day, every day, it goes on. Reports of misadventure, loss, betrayal and the pursuit of booty in all its forms, organize themselves as signposts along the highway. This happened here. That happened there. It’s obvious and it repeats and repeats. There’s nothing strange about it. What is strange is the way it gets understood. What is strange is the way we explain it to ourselves and stand as a thing apart from our observations until it happens to us.

It’s fascinating to watch it go by and to see its reflection in the mirror as if the mirror were a thing apart. In some ways people are very fortunate and terribly unlucky at the same time. They are fortunate that they don’t see the real face of what is taking place. It’s kind of like the difference between The Virgin Mary and Smashin Tara. Things are hidden from us, like the journey of your personal hamburger from the cow to your plate. But that’s just a part of the journey. It started before that. It started in the grass and before that in the sun. I wonder what happened before that? It continued on after as well. The same hamburger may go on forever. There’s this maxim about energy being created and destroyed but it doesn’t have to be written out here to be true.

The unlucky part is living in a fixed equation with the idea that somehow chance and hope and dreams will conspire to let you out through the side door before the notes come due. Just about every human mind; what is incorrectly defined as a mind, thinks that it will avoid the common fate. In the meantime this mind moves ceaselessly in all directions away from reality and at the same time compromises the salvation of its host while in the very presence of what saves it. The fix is in, has always been, yet this mind works relentlessly to destroy what is beautiful beyond its comprehension for the precise reason that it is beyond its comprehension.

Philosophers have tied it into sailor’s knots in the struggle to be free.

Dreamers yearn after half formed pictures that keep rearranging themselves before the image can come into focus. The post man comes to the house with a package for the man who moved with no forwarding address. Angels appear in disguise and are shown the door. We make phone calls and cannot tell that anyone is listening because they do not reply while the information is being processed. Later someone appears in an empty room and says, “You rang?”

Frustration storms down the street enraged that someone somewhere wouldn’t provide them with what they wanted because they thought there was more than one will at work. They thought there could be more than one will.

Time passes. Perspectives widen. Perspectives narrow. Tunnels to nowhere end nowhere. Empty meadows go about their business. Humanity presses itself together in confined spaces. Millions add to millions and most of the world lives in a tight and unpleasant embrace. Heat builds. This is simple physics. Pressure makes heat. The whole nature of explosives and resistance, the science of electricity and those parts of the chains of events, the parts we can see in the little we understand about the laws of various applications are presenting irrefutable evidence of what we won’t accept and refuse to see. It’s a puzzle. It’s a real puzzle when what you think you want comes up against the reality of what you are.

Nothing is something. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something is nothing. Someone once said that the key to serenity is to cut down on useless craving.

We are most exposed when we feel denied the thing we want. We don’t know who our enemies are and we certainly can’t recognize our friends. We are easily led and a liability to follow. One of the difficulties that a child experiences in learning to walk is that it starts out its life seeing things upside down. In learning to walk they turn their vision around; think old time cameras. Think of nature’s reflecting surfaces. There are powerful forces hiding in plain sight. We just don’t know how to use them.

Advertising is a revealing thing. Note how often a product is presented as being God? Note how often God is presented as the answer to an appetite? The message isn’t wrong. The product is just mislabeled and not the item you intrinsically want. The outside is claiming to be the inside. Here is why the world ALWAYS goes astray. The nature of the manifest world is to deceive you into believing that what you want is outside. You’ve got a long walk ahead of you, or maybe not, but probably as long as it takes to stop walking anyway.

The world isn’t wrong to be the way it is. It’s doing exactly what it is supposed to do. You can’t have a movie. You can’t have an epic drama without a stage to have it on. You can’t have it without deception because without deception you can’t get sucked into it. At no point is anything going to be profitable except to find this out. At no point will anyone have anything worth having that will put an end to them wanting to have something until they put an end to wanting.

Just as the answer is simple, so is the procedure. Simple, in fact, is the answer. All through history, certain wise men and women presented themselves as fools for a very good reason. The answer is not to want anything. The answer is to value nothing. Nothing is extremely valuable. Who possesses nothing is rich beyond counting. Quietude. But we don’t want quietude do we? The saddest tragedy is the idea that we will miss out on something. As far as that goes you are more right than you know.

Controlling anything begins with understanding that everything is under control. You experience the downside when you contend against this. Any problem anyone thinks they have is based on this alone. Do not contend. Suspending thought is a key ingredient but it isn’t the end of the matter. Awareness has to become aware of itself. Since awareness is in place, whether you are aware or not, it is always there whether you are there or not. Awareness expands and deepens in relation to your awareness of it. Some things are past description and this is one of them.

There’s nothing complicated about this. It is the simplicity that provokes the mind to elaborate on it and then produces a confusion of thoughts followed by weights and measures, followed by angels dancing on the head of a pin, followed by philosophies and technologies that make the argument that you must continue on through the tunnel to nowhere until you have warmed and illuminated the space outside you.

Quo vadis? ...And my favorite- cui bono? Well, sooner or later right? Of course, sooner or later only applies in the dimension of time but, what the heck, it’s all relative. You’ll note the applause sign just lit up for our studio audience so, give yourselves a big hand.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Or you could say- the outside, the contact point and the inside. Or you could say- the stage, the actor and the plot. Or you could say- the appearance, the presence and the mind. All of these terms are easily parsed into something more or less precise than each other but they’ll serve for those paying attention and they will also provide arguments over definition for the terminally combative. One wonders if the point is what’s important or whether the position taken is what’s important.

People say that it’s all very complicated. How else can you explain the writings of people whose sole purpose is confusion? Here I speak of the leaden weighted philosophers and theologians. Can anyone say that any clarity has emerged in terms of philosophy and theology over the course of the years? One can’t hope to come near the truth until one shit cans 99.99% of everything by everyone who has written anything on the subjects.

The most ironic thing is how fixed opinion can be in the minds of those who have never looked further than the street on which they live and never at all within. Somehow the thing sought is always outside of the person looking. Right there in the mind you can see it every time you reach. It’s a simple trick to reverse the process until you encounter the presence but there’s a big problem with that. When you encounter the presence you cease to be. Of course, you come to be in ways more real than you had ever imagined but... whoever it was that went looking was obliged to lose nearly everything they thought they knew about themselves in the process.

It’s the nature of manifest existence to become increasingly more complex in appearance as civilization drives toward comfort of the flesh and a separation from the sensation of pain. At the same time this short circuits the body’s ability to defend itself in a natural state. Consonant with this, one’s ability to process reality is based on one’s ability to accept shit as reality; shit in custom colors and an infinity of sensations processed by senses confined within bandwidths that cannot measure reality except in terms of sweetened colored shit.

People dance in rapture circles like a dervish drunk on cheap wine. They celebrate what, due to time hypnosis, seems to be stable but is breaking down in front of them; people, things, political systems, governments, love affairs, everything pretty much. Loss is certain; total loss of everything while in the midst of a 24 hour a day commercial for instant replacement. Wait a minute... what about this? What about that? Have you tried this? Finally... you’re too weary to think about it. You can’t remember what it was or who it happened to. After so many disappointments you wish you were dead. Well, you are.

You show up here with this new vehicle, right off the assembly line and it gets delivered to a pre-determined address. At this location, while the vehicle moves through stages of development, the mind is programmed with an outlook that is shaped by stimulations and reactions. Meanwhile, not a single thing that happens has anything to do with anything real. It’s just part of the movie and relates only to the movie and ends when the movie ends.

People probably fear loneliness and isolation more than anything else. They fear this precisely because of what they are confronted with when the barrage of external stimulus is removed; cut to millions of old people sitting in front of day time TV. As long as people can talk shit about shit, hear about shit, watch shit, stick parts of themselves into the shit, play hide and seek in shit, buy and sell shit, steal and recover shit... its good shit. It’s engrossing and entertaining. It occupies the time in transition. Pain and fear are on the way but maybe not today.

Governments and religions lie. They haven’t a clue as to their real purpose. Because they don’t know what is essential to their practice they become travesties. Got a place based on freedom and individual expression? The reverse is on the way. Balance is not a stationary scale. Balance is a scale in flux.

So, do you save the world or do you save yourself? For some odd reason a good portion of those who set out to save the world tend to screw it up worse than it was. There’s only one reason to open all of the cages in the zoo and that is in order to escape yourself while the confusion takes place. The majority of those escaping don’t know where to run to and are soon back in their cages.

Sometimes the world is fairly stable and you can do whatever it is that you do without too much hassle. Of course, you still die and lose everything but it’s got more of an Ozzie and Harriet feel and maybe you drift away while napping in the rocking chair on Golden Pond. Sooner or later though, the world gets into its unstable persona. You can’t rely on it to behave. Personal adjustments seem to be the key. If you can see trends then it’s no sin to act on them. If you can’t see them you’ll eventually become aware of their import. Some people think explosions are cool.

Nothing happens by accident and there are no innocent bystanders. Yeah, it’s a drag what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. It’s a drag what China did to Tibet and ‘is doing’ to the Falun Gong. It’s a drag what Bush is doing to America and it’s despicable that inarticulate liars dominate in the various media. It’s a drag that so much of the food and the entertainment and infinity of products are shit. It’s a drag that companies lie and that almost nobody cares about you; cut to the soundtrack on the ipod. Nobody gets away with anything. Nobody. Intention is a big thing in this regard.

It seems to clearly say that judgment is required. You are the result of your choices. Wherever you are they put you there. You can pack a suitcase and disappear any time. It might not be a walk through the mall for a little while but life seems to arrange around everything. A place to live, furniture, a job, a girl or boyfriend... they come off the assembly line every hour. Adventure waits.

There are several eternal mysteries playing themselves out every day and all along. There are quite a number of false impressions being presented as goads to action (on your part). There are hallucinations on the sidewalks and on the other side of every door. There are a million things to think about and only one thing that is important. If it isn’t on your mind then you’re distracting yourself and pain is on the way to tap you on the shoulder until you do. How long can you hold out? You can hold out for pretty close to forever.

It’s just a joke. It isn’t real and it hurts if you don’t think it’s funny or you try to make it real. Simple awareness is all that is required. If you watch you will eventually see it and it becomes a non-stop immersion in deep oil ecstasy, no purchase required. It’s a non-interruptible mushroom trip. It’s orgasmic sex that doesn’t end and fall asleep. The funny thing is that it’s right there. I mean... right there. It’s always there, so in ten thousand years it will still be there. In a million years it will still be there even if nothing else is. You begin to acquire it the moment you flow toward it and you begin to lose it the moment you flow out. You could flow out for a hundred thousand years and then flow back in. It’s been done.

The dynamic animating principle (or what I call DAP) does this exact same thing every cycle. It’s a game it plays with itself. You’re incidental to that, although you are a critical part. It takes all the pieces to make the whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Good luck with all the other stuff. And at any moment... well ...any moment... It’s right there.